


Oft Falling

by kylohen, thedevilchicken



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, F/M, Guilt, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-28 16:05:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14452845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kylohen/pseuds/kylohen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Every few months, whenever he can, Obi-Wan sends flowers to the Coruscant apartments of Senator Padmé Amidala.There's a reason for this that he can never explain, except to her. If anyone else knew, it would ruin him.





	Oft Falling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kereia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kereia/gifts).



Every few months, whenever he can, Obi-Wan sends flowers to the Coruscant apartments of Senator Padmé Amidala.

It's a more difficult feat to accomplish than might be assumed, given his position in the Jedi Order; life as a Jedi is more akin to a calling than any kind of standard contract of employment, and in the end the distinction is that they're not paid. Everything a Jedi could need in life is provided by the Jedi Council, and so Obi-Wan does not have a single credit to his name that actually belongs to him directly. He would never use the Temple funds that are sitting in the account that's in his name, at least not for this. The account is there for emergencies only, and the giving of private gifts - especially those he should know better than to give in the first place - is not something he can convince himself should count. 

Sending flowers becomes complicated, just from a purely financial standpoint, when you're a member of the Jedi Order. It's a complicated game of trading favours while tamping down your shame and guilt because, of course, you know for a fact that a Jedi Knight should not be sending flowers to a senator in the first place. Not secretly, at least, and definitely not for this reason. 

And _then_ , of course, there's the fact that the flowers he sends only grow on Naboo. That's where he first encountered them.

\---

Three years ago, almost to the day, he was sent back to Theed. 

He was sent for the celebration. Chancellor Palpatine had thought that dispatching a familiar Jedi face to welcome Naboo's newest senator to her seat in the Galactic Senate would be a pleasant gesture, both socially and politically, and Obi-Wan, at least initially, could not have disagreed. It seemed fitting, considering the series of events there on Naboo seven years prior, and on a personal level he didn't object at all to a brief visit with the queen. People who had known his master, at least outside the Order, were getting ever thinner on the ground.

Of course, her second term had ended, and _Queen_ Amidala would shortly be made _Senator_ Amidala instead. It hadn't surprised him to hear that her people had wanted her to take a third term, nor had it surprised him when she'd refused to let them amend their constitution just for her. He suspected the senate would be a livelier place for knowing her, though he wouldn't have liked to say whether that was a good point or bad.

By the time he arrived, he already knew that he'd be staying on Naboo for longer than any of them had anticipated - the timeline had changed due to treaty negotiations with the Gungans running longer than the schedule they'd made, and the estimate had added at least an extra week to his trip. Obi-Wan had asked if he should return to Coruscant in the meantime, but masters Windu and Yoda had instructed him to accept the queen's offer of hospitality, await the senator's confirmation, and then escort her to the senate as planned. He supposed a few days away from the Temple, away from his padawan and away from any pressing, perilous missions might make a welcome change.

He arrived at the palace alone, without immediate plans; Anakin had wanted to accompany him but Master Yoda had had other ideas to occupy Padawan Skywalker's time, mostly involving a party of younglings and the kyber caves on Ilum, and Obi-Wan could only imagine how well that would or wouldn't go. So, he left the Temple alone, he landed on Naboo, and he stepped down the boarding ramp of his small ship to meet Padmé Amidala on the landing pad. She was already there waiting, unexpected but not at all unwelcome. 

"You look well, Master Kenobi," she said, when he approached. It was raining, just very lightly; small drops had caught in her elaborately styled hair and across her bare collarbones as she had apparently waved her escorts, with their battery of large umbrellas, back toward the doors. She'd been headstrong when he'd known her several year before, he thought, and he was unsurprised - and perhaps oddly pleased - to see that hadn't changed. She'd never been a perfect model of conformity. Neither had he, though he liked to think that he'd improved in that respect in recent years.

"I look older," he replied, with a knowing quirk of his brows, as the ramp of his ship retracted into place behind him. After the long trip through hyperspace, the light mist of rain on his face and the faint chill in the air felt rather invigorating, as did Padmé Amidala's amused expression. "You, Senator, seem to have barely changed at all." 

"Are you saying I still seem like a child to you?" she asked, turning her head this way and that for him to check from the relevant angles, as she smiled a faint but teasing smile. 

"I'm saying you were always a force to be reckoned with," he replied, with a smile of his own. "No matter your age." Then he took a step closer and he offered her his arm.

She laughed and said something offhand about flattery, then she took his arm and they made their way indoors together, her long, fine dress and his long, rough cloak skimming faintly against the palace's stone floors. They strolled, her escorts hanging back to what was very nearly a discreet distance, and she pointed out the ballroom, the throne room, various reception rooms, corridors that led to places that he wasn't sure if he remembered from his brief time there seven years earlier or if all the palace corridors just looked the same. He suspected equal parts of both.

When he asked how long it had taken her to get to know her way around, she leaned in close and told him, lowly, "Honestly, sometimes I still get lost." It echoed brightly against the walls when he laughed, and she smiled at him like that pleased her. She seemed more relaxed then than he'd known her before, now she was in that strange kind of twilight time between queenship and the senate. From what he could tell, that level of relaxation suited her.

She introduced him to Queen Jamillia, her successor to the throne, when they came to audience chamber at the appointed time, then they said their temporary goodbyes and two armed palace guards escorted him to the quarters he'd been assigned. Jedi travel light - he didn't have much in the way of possessions with him that he required to settle in, even aside from the fact he preferred to keep his ship ready to depart at a moment's notice, and the rooms in his suite were more than large enough to accommodate ten Jedi. The bed was large enough for three at the very least and he suspected he could have swum laps in the bathtub. He almost felt homesick for his small, sparse rooms back home in the Temple, which was perhaps why he didn't stay there very long.

He spent the afternoon walking in the grounds in the rain, unconcerned by the damp and the faint autumnal chill that was hanging in the air. The palace was nestled right at the edge of the cliff, by waterfalls and a perilous drop; Obi-Wan tried to remind himself he was there with a diplomatic mandate from the chancellor himself to hobnob with politicians on Naboo at the senator's confirmation party, not to fall to his untimely death, but he decided a little exercise couldn't hurt. He spent hours scaling walls and climbing old stone turrets and sitting perched on ledges over waterfalls, his heart racing as his bootheels slipped on the rain-slicked stone. It was precisely what he would have told his padawan not to do, though he suspected he would have done it anyway. He supposed Anakin might have rubbed off on him at least as much as the other way around.

Afterwards, he walked through the woods that led back from the cliff edge, his cloak catching on the branches of the densely-packed trees so he took it off and folded it up underneath his arm. He sat down to meditate under a low tree with wide-stretched, flowering branches that stood by a pond full of fish; it seemed to be a little wildish garden at the end of a flagstone path that was overgrown with moss and run through with cracks, all tucked away at the foot of a tower. There was an old stone bench that evidently someone had thought to keep clean that sat inside an ivy-covered stone arbour of a similar vintage. There were paving stones worn concave with hundreds of years of use, and a short, weatherbeaten jetty that jutted out over the pond. It seemed peaceful, and he felt like he needed that. To an extent, he'd dreaded his return to Theed.

He knew why he'd spent the afternoon climbing and running and jumping and peering down from such great heights, the way he'd liked to when he'd been younger just to prove the point that he could. He'd tried so hard to let go of the grief that surrounded the fact of his master's death, but being there in Theed had brought that feeling back; he relaxed to the sound of the rain on the pond and let it go again as best he could, in fits and starts. The earthy-sweet smell of the garden's late flowers and the slow drift of the deep red blossom from the tree overhead seemed to help, and he could feel the Force all around him, surprisingly strong. He could feel the rain on his face, in his hair, trickling down his neck, and the faint warmth of the setting sun that threaded through the trees. 

When he opened his eyes and looked up into the sky through the branches and the leaves and the vivid red blossom, when he looked up at the tower that jutted up in front of him, the only one that overlooked the garden in any direct way, the senator was watching from a balcony high above. She waved down with a smile and he waved back and, for a moment, he considered climbing up to her, to the top of that tower, though the thought struck him as absurd even in the light of his afternoon's adventures. He closed his eyes again instead and leaned back against the tree trunk. 

Qui-Gon had always told him to be mindful of the living Force, to focus on the moment, and so he tried to then. But, as he breathed in the scent of the flowers in the rain, as he went inside and dried himself on luxurious palace linen, as he ate good food that was brought to his room and read Council reports and then went to bed, he was thinking of something else entirely. He wasn't thinking of the living Force.

He was thinking of Padmé Amidala, waving from a tower. He was thinking of the smile on her face, and the warmth it made him feel. 

\---

He made his way through the dense trees and back to the garden early the following morning, when the sunrise through the rain lit up the sky in bright rainbows. 

He found the senator already there, sitting on the covered stone bench with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her shoes were kicked off, her bare feet pulled up and peeking out from underneath the full skirt of her rather lengthy if informal dress. She was reading from an old-style cloth-bound book, small and well-preserved but obviously much older than either of them were by then, and she glanced at him over the top edge of it before she marked her page with a ribbon and tucked it away into an unseen pocket.

"Apologies for the intrusion," he said, and she waved that notion off with one hand as she turned to put her feet down, making space for him on the bench beside her. She shivered as she did so, so he swept off his cloak and he sat down beside her, their shoulders almost touching; he spread his cloak out over them both like an oddly shaped blanket and she smiled, leaning her head back against the stone behind her as she pulled the rough brown fabric up under her chin. 

"I used to come here when I was still queen," she told him, glancing at him sideways. "When I needed to clear my head. I'm not sure anyone else knows it's here."

"And you needed to clear your head today?" he asked.

She smiled wryly. "I'm leaving my home in three days' time to live on Coruscant," she said. "After the queen officially, _publicly_ , announces me as the new senator for Naboo. I don't imagine for a second that this will be easy. I _do_ imagine I've made enemies." She patted his arm briefly, underneath the cloak. "Thank you for your concern, Master Kenobi." 

"Of course, Senator." 

She raised her brows. "I'm not a senator yet," she said. "You're just going to have to call me Padmé until then." She turned to him slightly, untucking one hand from under the cloak that she held out to him as if in introduction, like they hadn't met several years before. "Padmé Naberrie." 

He eyed her hand for a moment, then he took it with a faint hint of a squeeze. Her fingers were chilly against his as if she'd been out there for hours before he'd arrived, maybe since close to dawn as it was still quite early then; the way they stole the warmth from his own fingers made him shiver disconcertedly underneath his robes, or at least that was his immediate appraisal. 

"Obi-Wan Kenobi," he replied, and she nodded, apparently content with that, and they returned to silence. 

He found her presence oddly calming as they sat there side by side, listening to the light rain on the pond, watching leaves fall over the flowers. Qui-Gon had told him he should pay attention to the moment and so he tried to, as he had the previous day, reaching out into the garden with the Force; he felt the blades of grass and the tall green trees and the fragrant white flowers, the fish swimming underneath the pond's raindrop-clouded surface, and Padmé Amidala sitting there next to him. He could feel her almost physically, her warmth, the beating of her heart, how she circled her ankles and scrunched her toes underneath his trailing cloak to keep herself in quiet motion. He could feel her sense of purpose and determination lying steady beneath a thin veil of understandable nerves. He didn't have to say he knew quite a lot about leaving home, and duty, and serving something greater than oneself; they might not have known each other well just then, but he felt they had at least that much in common. 

"You know," she said, perhaps twenty minutes later, maybe thirty, maybe more. "I don't think you've ever seen the city while it's not been under some kind of attack. Are you free? I'd like to show it to you without the blasters and flames." 

Frankly, Obi-Wan wasn't used to dangling at such a loose end. His work usually kept him close to fully occupied at almost all times and even when it didn't, there was Anakin, and there were the younglings, and there was the Temple. More and more, the Council had come to rely on him, and he felt honoured by their trust - he supposed that part of the obligation that rose from that trust was that he trust them in turn, at least as far as their judgement in having him remain idle on Naboo was concerned. He had no plans, though he supposed he might make some, but for the moment he just said, "Thank you. I'd like that very much."

She threw back the cloak. "Meet me here in twenty minutes," she told him, leaning down to pull on her shoes. The neck of her dress dipped perilously low as she did so and she gave him a faint smile and a headshake of unselfconscious acknowledgement when she noticed it; he made a vague gesture that hopefully said he'd seen many more shocking things in his time in the galaxy, his wide cuffs swinging. He really had seen more shocking things than a couple of additional inches of a woman's low neckline, after all, and he suspected she'd worn more revealing outfits to a number of official diplomatic functions. He'd seen a few of them, at least in holos, though somehow the candid moment seemed more personal.

"I should change," she said. She quirked her brows ironically, glancing down at her dress as she tugged it expertly back into its proper place. "I don't suppose Jedi have this problem."

"Oh, you'd be surprised the trouble we can get ourselves into," he replied, and she laughed as she left the bench with a glance back over her shoulder. 

"Someday you'll have to tell me about this trouble you get into," she told him, grinning, and then she vanished down the overgrown path back to the palace.

When she returned, her outfit seemed more practical for walking if no less fine, and she led him to a secondary palace gate where four guards all made a short half-bow as she passed by. Obi-Wan was aware of a pair of guards in plain clothes following them, but as the senator paid them no attention beyond a polite greeting nod, neither did he. He'd been a bodyguard more than once - he understood the principle.

He hadn't expected her to be excellent company but, by the end of the day, he knew she was. She showed him the sights of the capital city as they walked and talked together, trailed by her guards; he did remember parts of it, as he'd thought he might, but from unhappier times. She showed him Queen Yram's needle and the Royal Academy where she'd studied before her election, and they walked by the banks of the Solleu all the way to Virdugo Plunge, where they stood by the railing in the fine mist of spray from the falls. She seemed to truly believe in democracy and the Galactic Republic, and when she spoke about her duty, it sounded much more like her very great honour. There was a lot in that that he understood himself.

And, besides that, she knew how to tease him in just the right light-hearted yet truthful way to make him smile a genuine smile. She wasn't intimidated by the Jedi the way some were. She wasn't deferential toward him and she didn't expect him to act that way toward her, either. It was almost like they weren't a politician and a Jedi Knight; it was more like they were friends, or at least like they might be one day soon. 

They parted ways at the palace entrance and Obi-Wan made his way to his quarters, up the stairs and down the corridors. He ate alone, and he checked in with the Temple. 

He fell asleep that night, still pleasantly surprised. He hadn't enjoyed himself so thoroughly in months, and that was thanks in no small part to Padmé Amidala.

\---

They met again in the morning, back in the garden by the pond. She smiled and made space for him on the bench as she had before, so he sat down and they talked. She didn't seem to mind the interruption, but she had engagements to go to and she left just under an hour later, pulling on her shoes. She turned back on her way and asked him to come to dinner. 

"I'm afraid it's a dull political occasion," she told him, but with a sparkle that intrigued him, so he told her yes and they fixed a time to meet. Then he watched her leave, with a glance back over her shoulder and a smile and a wave. He found himself smiling in return, even after she was gone. He didn't think to ask himself why. 

That morning, he meditated, sitting on the bench in the arbour with his eyes closed and his cloak pulled close around him to keep out what was, by then, the expected autumnal chill. He felt very much as if he could have spent a full day there, barely moving, listening to the rain patter against the water and against the trees' wide leaves. He could have spent a full day there, remembering Padmé Amidala waving from the tower above, the concentration on her face as she read, the contrast between her serious dedication to her planet and the good-humoured, friendly way she treated him. She wasn't afraid to laugh at herself or at the absurdity of palace life around her. Fortunately, Obi-Wan was much the same way, at least when he allowed himself that luxury.

He could have spent a full day there, but he made himself leave. He didn't return to his previous jumping-climbing antics, though he stubbornly refused to be embarrassed by them; he walked out to Theed's main hangar instead and wandered through the complex in the midst of the low-level military activities, apparently no one there seeing fit to challenge his presence. Some of the soldiers and pilots and mechanics seemed to remember him, or perhaps they just understood _what_ he was rather than _who_. They nodded in acknowledgement. He did the same in return. It was a familiar exchange.

He told himself he wasn't going where it was obvious he was going. He's never been particularly prone to self-delusion but he didn't have a strong desire to acknowledge the fact of it until he was already there, wandering out of the hangar and into the plasma refinery, up to the laser gates past the catwalks. Qui-Gon wasn't there, not any longer, but he could almost hear the battle - not the blasters in the hangar as they'd been too far away from that, but Qui-Gon's lightsaber clashing with the Sith's in the relative quiet of the refinery. He could almost see it, and almost feel the bile in his throat and the abject horror clutching in his chest as he watched his master cut down. He remembered how that had felt, and how he'd felt when he'd killed the Sith. He'd been made a Jedi Knight shortly after, but he'd never felt less like a Jedi than then. What he felt was not becoming.

He didn't rush through the gates like he had the last time, not because there was clearly no need but because he wasn't sure he had the energy to do so. The memory of his dead master was so keen in that place that he felt sick with it and when he was through, past the red glow of the gates that reminded him of nothing so much as the blades of the dead Sith's saberstaff, he sat on the ground with his back to the wall by the reactor shaft. He dropped his head into his hands. Everything had changed after Qui-Gon's death - he was well-respected in his own right and had a padawan of his own. Perhaps it wasn't very Jedi of him, but he'd have given up all he had in an instant if he could just have had his master back. 

He spent the rest of the day in the library, reading - the Naboo had a rich academic and literary tradition and the part of Obi-Wan that valued the older masters' teachings in the Temple library valued the books there similarly. He read about the evolution of their political system, about their myths and legends, about the planetary plasma that they used for power, trying to take his mind off his less palatable memories. And then, in the early evening, he made his way to the palace gates and paced lightly as he waited for the senator. She greeted him with a smile as their transport pulled up. He held the door. She seemed charmed by that. 

The dinner was exactly as she'd described it: a dull political occasion. The other guests gathered around the table of one of Queen Jamillia's chief political advisers all had their own outspoken opinions and seemed to want to sway their Jedi friend to their particular point of view, or else ignored him completely and he knew which approach he preferred. The senator seemed at ease with the company in general but glanced at Obi-Wan from time to time, who was sitting just at her right elbow, but as the others discussed the finer points of the treaty with the Gungans, she leaned in close to his ear to explain. Every now and then, the way she spoke made him shiver.

"I apologise for dragging you out for that," she told him, afterwards, as they made their way back through the city and toward the palace. Obi-Wan carried a broad umbrella that stretched out over both of them and the senator swept her long skirt out to the side with one hand, rather expertly, to keep it from dragging on the ground. They decide to walk, waving off the transport. "I have to admit it was more for my benefit than yours." 

Obi-Wan glanced at her as they walked. "I'm a Jedi," he said. "Every situation is an opportunity to learn." 

"Even if it's not a topic you care to learn about?"

He arched a brow at her. " _Especially_ then," he said, and she laughed and took his arm. He could feel the chill in her skin through his cloak so he passed her the umbrella and swept off his cloak; it was a little long when he draped it around her shoulders, that were left bare by the cut of her dress, but she swept the hem out with the long skirt of her dress and managed to walk with it admirably. 

When she handed it back on the steps up to the palace doors and he pulled it on over his tunic, her light perfume still clung to the fabric of it. He couldn't say he minded one bit.

\---

They met again in the morning and sat together on the bench just like they had before. 

The rain still hadn't stopped - he knew that Naboo was all water underneath its surface, its porous crust all riddled with waterways, but the perpetual rain through the autumn was apparently a feature that had passed him by, even if the Naboo seemed to weather it stoically with rainproof overcoats and the judicious application of umbrellas, both fabric and powered by plasma. Still, he was used to the bottom hem of his cloak dragging in the mud and the sand and through puddles, and was happy enough to pull his hood up against the misty rain in the air. 

As they sat in the arbour and talked over the previous night, about the treaty and intraplanetary politics, as conversation moved on to the senate and her role, her concerns and her aspirations, the rain only touched the toes of his boots as he stretched out his legs. Red blossom from the trees came down with it. Here and there, a petal from the nearby white flowers floated on the breeze and caught against the wet leather. Compared with Naboo, Coruscant was a virtual wasteland, and he told her so; even the Temple felt almost barren in comparison.

"It can't be _that_ bad," she said, but the faint quirk at the corner of her lips said she knew exactly what Coruscant was like. The Royal Academy prepared senators, too, and after that she talked about academic trips to the capital, getting lost in the senate building and spending the night on the sofa in the office of the senator from Iridonia, who had just so happened to leave the door unlocked. He hoped she knew what she was getting into but he trusted that she did, likely ten times better than he ever could.

"Are you free for dinner?" she asked, when she stood to go inside and change for her day's meetings.

"I thought I might explore the city after dark," he replied, and she raised her brows, her hands rising to her hips. 

"And you weren't going to ask me to be your guide?" she said. "I'm appalled, Master Kenobi." But she said it with an amused twinkle in her eyes that said she wasn't close to serious, and he made a show of looking mock-abashed. "Honestly, let me take you out for some authentic Naboo cuisine," she said, as she turned to walk away, glancing back over her shoulder as she went. "Meet me here at sunset? I promise you'll enjoy it."

He couldn't think of any sensible reason why he shouldn't do just that, and so they met in the garden just as the sun was setting. She was wearing a plain hooded robe over plain civilian trousers and boots that reached up to her knees - the effect of it was nothing like the sweeping gowns of the queen he'd briefly known and much more like the headstrong girl who'd pretended, quite convincingly, to be her own handmaiden. She showed him a secret way down from the palace and out into Theed, through the trees in the palace grounds to a covered walkway that ran parallel to the river, just out of sight of passing boats. She walked quickly, like she was excited to be going out there incognito, or maybe just excited to show him the places she liked.

The city was bustling and quite beautiful after dark, now he was seeing it with the benefit of his not being under fire or at his master's funeral - it was all stone pavements and stone-faced buildings, domed roofs and the smell of cooking food. Padmé knew exactly where to take him, down winding paths and skipping over puddles that twinkled with the low lights of nearby buildings - there was a bar with a band playing a kind of lively music on instruments Obi-Wan had never heard before, and they sat together at a corner table she'd reserved for them, in the flickering candlelight. Padmé seemed at home there, every bit as much as she had in a throne room or would in the senate. He found he liked that side of her. 

She ordered for them both and they shared hot foods from the same plates as they talked, eating with their fingers that they rinsed in a small bowl when they were done. It was nothing elaborate, unlike the previous night's political dinner, but he found he strongly preferred it and the wine accompanying the meal had a much more robust, satisfying flavour. The conversation was more to his taste, too; they talked less about Naboo's thorny political situation and more about the books he'd been reading in the library. She'd read them all, and he couldn't say that was surprising. The Naboo chose young leaders, yes, and perhaps they were occasionally naive in their particular convictions, but they were at the very least never uneducated.

She dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin once they'd finished their food, smiling, her fingers brushing his face and rubbing his beard the wrong way. He hadn't had it when they'd first met, he realised - he'd been a lot younger, or at least he felt a lot older then, with a padawan's braid and shorter hair, and definitely without a beard. She tugged on it lightly. He chuckled. 

"I can assure you it's quite real," he said, amused, leaning close to speak over the music. 

"I've just always wondered what they feel like," she replied, and he was struck for a moment by the strange life she must have led, considering her chosen profession and the young age at which she'd begun in it, so strangely comparable to his own. So he tilted up his chin a little and she ran her fingers over the beard he kept considering shaving off again, except who had the time for that? She used both hands, ran her thumbs over the underside of his chin, over the knot in his throat. Then one hand moved back to the nape of his neck, to the back of his hair that was longer then than it had been when they'd first met. A lot about him had changed, and not only the physical. As he looked at her, so close by, smiling and happy, he wondered if she'd changed, too. 

She ran the tips of three fingers over his moustache, then down over his lips. She traced the curve of his bottom lip with the pad of her forefinger, then with the pad of her thumb. Her smile faded slowly. She was blushing. Maybe so was he, and maybe his pulse quickened just a fraction, and maybe that was the heat of the room or the spice in the food or maybe something else entirely, but he didn't allow himself to speculate. And maybe he wondered what she might do next, if anything, if the look on her face might mean something, but he cleared his throat and he turned away before he could find out. It was for the best, he reasoned, but he couldn't deny that he'd wanted to know. At least not to himself.

"We should be getting back to the palace, Senator," he said. "Before somebody there misses us." 

She agreed, though they both knew the secrecy of their visit to town was just a pleasant kind of fiction, considering the fact that her guards were stationed nearby in the bar, as unobtrusively as possible, and no doubt more were loitering outside. And so, she led the way back to the palace by the "secret" route, and they said goodnight in the stairwell at the end of her corridor. He took her hand and he kissed the back of it entirely on a whim, and, as he walked away, he knew he shouldn't have done it. He felt that keenly, as something in him tightened. He should have said no to dinner and spent the evening in quiet meditation. He should have insisted on a chaperone but he was a Jedi - he _was_ the chaperone, or he was meant to be. He wasn't meant to have strange, charged moments with upcoming members of the senate.

He went directly to bed, after he'd washed his face and hung his cloak up for the hem to air dry. He lay there, on the extremely fine bed linen on top of the extremely fine mattress, staring at the ceiling in the relative dark, trying hard not to think about Padmé Amidala and what might have happened if he hadn't turned away. He felt warm, he felt uncomfortable, he felt a lot of things he hadn't felt in years because he simple hadn't allowed himself to - she was beautiful and intelligent, witty and committed, and he understood his attraction to every piece of that, but he knew he should put it aside and put it away and pretend nothing had happened at all. Perhaps he even wanted to, but then again perhaps he didn't. 

He couldn't sleep, that much was clear, so he slipped back outside and down to the garden, but someone was already there when he arrived. He knew it was her without needing to look, but he _did_ look. When he rounded the corner, quietly, near-silently, there she was in the stone arbour where they'd sat together in the mornings, bathed in moonlight through the rain and the trees instead of sun; her nightdress had slipped from one shoulder and fallen low enough to expose one breast; she'd rucked her nightdress up around her thighs and one hand dipped down in between them. He'd never seen her like that. She was stunning. 

He knew what she was doing. He knew he should have turned and walked away, but he didn't do that. He watched her instead. He watched that hand as it moved between her thighs and the expression on her face, her parted lips, and he knew he shouldn't, he _knew_ he shouldn't, but there was something in the air that made him look, something in the perfume of the flowers, in the smell of the rain, or at least that was the excuse he gave himself. He wanted to go to her, to stride over the wet grass and go down on his knees in front of her, nuzzle at her thigh, kiss her skin, tease between her legs with the tip of his tongue. He wanted to taste her, to put his hands on her, to make her hips shift against his fingers, or perhaps against his mouth. He knew he shouldn't, knew he _couldn't_ , but he wanted to. 

He wanted to and he could feel himself stiffening underneath his clothes, and he hated it, he hated that he'd come to this point in spite of everything he'd trained himself to be. He wanted to tangle his fingers into her long, loose hair and press his mouth to hers. He wanted to push himself inside her and feel her legs wrap tight around his waist. It was all so vivid. It was right there, taking his breath away, making his pulse quicken as he watched her shiver in the damp midnight chill. He wanted to put his hands on her, to use the heat of his own body to warm her. He didn't believe for one moment that the sentiment was altruistic.

He could almost see himself having her, her back pushed up against the arbour wall. He could almost see himself sitting down on the bench, slouching down so she could straddle his thighs and ride him, gasping. It hit him hard, and she didn't stop, and he didn't leave. She turned her head and moaned and shivered as she came, her hips bucking hard against her fingers, and all Obi-Wan could do was flee in shame, just as quickly as he could. 

But, behind closed doors, he knelt down on the flagstone floor by the foot of the bed, scuffing the toes of his boots. He pulled up his tunic and he pushed down his trousers and he rested his forehead against the bed's wooden frame. He stroked himself, with her in his head, alarmed, disgusted, disconcerted. 

When he came, he could have cried. But, mercifully, sleep came quickly after.

\---

In the morning, she was in the garden, stretched out barefoot on the arbour bench with her cloak folded up for a pillow. She smiled and waved to greet him, just like nothing had happened the previous night at all. From her perspective, he supposed it hadn't. From his perspective, too much had. 

They had both received an invitation to observe Queen Jamillia's negotiations with the Gungans that day, and Obi-Wan thought it might be a welcome distraction from his ridiculous situation; the issue was, when he walked into the room that had been set up for that purpose, his assigned seat was right there next to hers. As the meeting progressed at the high table in the elaborate hall, Obi-Wan couldn't help but be aware of her next to him, how the smell of the pretty white flowers clung to her hair and, every now and then, her knee or her hand or arm would brush his. He hadn't felt such an absurd infatuation since his early days as a padawan. He told himself he could surmount it now. He told himself he had to.

He attended the state dinner in the Gungans' honour that evening, and he found himself seated with a familiar face; he made conversation with Jar Jar Binks, dodging errant elbows and the odd stray piece of fish with relatively good humour, and for a time it did take his mind off his peculiar problem. He made arrangements to visit with Jar Jar in Otoh Gunga the following day, which he realised too late may or may not have been a step towards his own untimely death, but he had to admit he was distracted. He had to admit he was thinking about her, in her nightdress, in the dark. 

When the meal had reached its end, Obi-Wan made his excuses and retreated to his rooms. He couldn't help but think he still preferred the traditional cuisine that Padmé had bought for him the previous night, and the informality of the music and the bar and the smiling faces all around them had been such a breath of fresh air compared with stuffy, formal, diplomatic proceedings. He lay in bed, trying not to compare the rigid corsetry of her dinner dress with its high neck and floor-skimming skirts to her plain tunic, or her long hair hanging in braids to the elaborate style with its discs and pins and lacquer. 

And then, when he couldn't sleep, he left the bed and he dressed and he slipped out of his room. He went down the winding staircase and down the long stone corridors and slipped out into the grounds, and he followed the overgrown paths through the trees in the rain. He knew where he was going though he told himself he wasn't; he told himself he would take the sharp left toward the cliffs to overlook the long drop, but he took the winding turn to the right instead. He made his way to the garden by the tower, hoping she wouldn't be there, but then again hoping she would. 

She was there. She was there and it was the same thing again, her long nightdress pulled up, her head resting back. She'd pulled up one foot onto the bench to inch her thighs out wider and he could see what she was doing, spreading herself with one hand and fucking herself with the other, two of her fingers pushing up inside. He could imagine himself pushing into her instead, with his fingers or his cock, and he should have left, but he didn't, and he knew he wasn't going to; he watched her from the foot of the tower, from across the garden, the rain dampening his hair but he honestly didn't care about that. He watched her from the shadows, resenting himself for doing it. And when she came with a gasp, he vanished again, back up to his room. 

He slumped to the floor against the back of his door and he shoved his trousers down around his knees. When he stroked himself, he couldn't find it in himself to pretend he wasn't thinking about her. 

He left early in the morning, just a brief _good morning_ exchange in the garden before he headed to his ship and then off to the shore of Lake Paonga. Jar Jar met him there with the boss's heyblibber, which seemed foolhardy to Obi-Wan at the time though they made it all the way to Otoh Gunga without any more of an incident than a near miss with a particularly large school of fish. They disembarked in the city and Jar Jar showed him around; they said a lot of hellos and ate in Jar Jar's favourite restaurant, though Obi-Wan had to admit would have infinitely preferred Naboo cuisine to Gungan. He supposed his palate just wasn't quite refined enough for that.

They left the city in the rather late evening and Obi-Wan returned to Theed in the very early morning. He returned to the palace by the quieter route by the river, unnoticed by the guards, so he made a note to point out that particular hole in their security. And, he went to the garden. He didn't try to deny that that was where he was going. 

She was there, of course. He'd used a visit with Jar Jar as an excuse to avoid her but of course she was there when he returned, with her nightdress pulled up, with her long hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she touched herself, as she squeezed one breast over the thin fabric of her nightdress and then ran that hand down over her stomach, her navel, down between her thighs. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth as he watched her fingers shift, as he watched her feet flex till she was resting on the ball of them, her toes almost pointing. He watched her take a handful of her own hair, fingers tangled with it as she rocked her hips against her hand and then, as he felt his stomach tighten, as he felt himself stiffening, she opened her eyes. She looked straight at him, and he stood there, mortified. 

When she came, just seconds later, he turned and fled. 

\---

He couldn't face her in the morning, so he made arrangements to spend the day with the Naboo military. That night, he slept on his ship and avoided the garden. 

He couldn't face her the next morning, so he made arrangements to spend the day in diplomatic conferences with long-standing Council allies and running errands on the Chancellor's behalf, which made sense considering Chancellor Palpatine's origins. That night, he slept on his ship and he avoided the garden again. 

He couldn't face her the next morning, either. He couldn't face her the morning after that. And every night, he slept in a bunk on his ship, cramped and awkward and losing his mind with the light drumming sound of the rain against the metal hull, and he told himself when he wrapped his hand around his cock and stroked, he wasn't thinking about her eyes on him as she'd shuddered and come. He wasn't thinking about her watching him the way that he'd been watching her. He felt ashamed, but apparently not ashamed enough to stop. 

She invited him to dinner the next night, an envelope arriving with a palace guard who seemed relieved to be out of his usual post, albeit temporarily. He sent his polite apologies in return because he couldn't see her. He imagined a conversation she might want to have that he just couldn't, that he wasn't equipped for; he didn't need to know if she hated him for his eyes on her, or indeed if her reaction was anything else entirely. He knew that he deserved it. He just wished he didn't feel the loss of her company quite so acutely.

She invited him to dinner the next night, too, with an embossed envelope brought over by one of her ex-handmaidens, who frowned at him disapprovingly though she managed to make even that seem strangely formal. She waited for his response; he wrote out his apologies on the back of her own invitation, unused to handwriting but the handmaiden had brought a pen with her. He said no, as graciously but vehemently as he knew how to. After that, she stopped. He wished she hadn't, but it was best that she had.

He saw her on occasion, across the square as she headed to a meeting or else he did, in the negotiation room, at the far end of the same corridor. He hurried away as she looked at him, caught up in conversation with her companions so she couldn't have followed if she'd wanted to, at least not without raising suspicions. He wasn't sure; perhaps she _did_ want to, or perhaps that was just his own wishful thinking. He could barely stop thinking about her. He was distracted. He wasn't himself.

He avoided contact as often as he could, since his mission still did not include recall to Coruscant; he'd asked one morning and had his request denied. After that call, Obi-Wan strode by the garden on his way to his ship. He strode down the path as if he hadn't seen her, the hood of his cloak pulled up to hide his face in shadow and keep off the perpetual rain, but he could hear her footsteps as she ran to catch him up - it turned out that she _did_ want to follow, at least that time. She caught his wrist and tugged him off the path into a small glass-walled, domed-roofed pavilion in the trees. 

"Can I help you, Senator?" Obi-Wan asked, pulling himself up straight and tall and proper, like a real Jedi might. 

"Padmé," she replied, hotly. "I told you to call me Padmé."

He sighed. He tucked his hands behind his back. "Can I help you, _Padmé_?"

She put her hands on her hips. "You were running away from me."

"I was going..."

She raised her brows. "You were running away from me." 

He sighed again. He nodded. "Yes," he agreed. "I was running away from you." 

"I didn't realise that Jedi scared so easily." 

He crossed his arms over his chest. "Honestly, neither did I," he replied, not entirely sure what else to say. "Look, I don't understand what's happening here." 

"Do you have to?"

"Yes!" He threw his hands up and he turned and he leaned against the glass for a moment with both palms. He watched the rainwater sluicing down the outside of it, then he closed his eyes and he rested his forehead down against the panes. 

"I'm a Jedi," he said.

"And I'm a senator," she replied.

He glanced back at her just for a second, over his right shoulder. "Not yet," he replied, like that made a difference somehow and not just academically, and she shook her head, rubbing her eyes with one hand. 

"Come to dinner tonight," she said. "I'll have it served in my room." 

"I can't," he replied. 

"Then we'll have it here." 

"I _can't_." 

"Here. At sunset." 

"Padmé..."

But she left before he could protest again. He didn't follow her. He wasn't sure if it would have made things better or worse if he had, but he didn't follow her. And, that night, he stayed in his ship instead of meeting her for dinner, because apparently Jedi _did_ scare easily. He was exasperated. He was very close to desperate. He was thinking of her as he stroked himself, though frequency of occurrence of that particular phenomenon hadn't made the notion any easier. 

He avoided her. Negotiations continued, drawing close to a conclusion, and he avoided her whenever practical. She looked at him across rooms with an expression that he couldn't read and what he felt in the Force surrounding her was something angry and hot that he couldn't read completely, either. He avoided her in every way he could - he took a boat out on the river, flew his ship over the plains, went back to the bar where they'd eaten that night though he couldn't bring himself to stay for long. And then, after six nights, seven, he left his ship and he made his way back to the palace in the dark just past midnight. He'd seen her at a meeting earlier in the day, after the treaty had finally been signed, sitting there with a white flower from the garden tucked into her elaborate hair that he knew was entirely for his benefit. When she'd left the room when the meeting was done, she'd left the flower on the table. He'd left it there, too, but he came back for it that night, cursing himself as he did so. Then he went down to the garden, though he knew he absolutely shouldn't. 

She wasn't there. He frowned, and he thought about leaving, going up to the room they were still holding for him or back to his ship where he'd been sleeping to avoid the temptation to see her, but he went to the arbour and he sat down instead. He rested his head back against the stonework behind the bench and he slouched, terribly unjedilike, with the flower resting in his hands. Its petals were wet with cold drops of the rain he'd just walked through. He let the warmth of his hand start to dry it.

He tried to convince himself he wasn't disappointed that she wasn't there and that her not being there was a relief instead, but he knew that was far from the truth of it. He'd wanted her to be there, though he wasn't sure what he'd wanted to happen. He'd thought about it every night, what she'd done, what he'd watched her do, and all the ways he wanted her. But honestly, in the end, he'd have settled for conversation. He missed her, even if that broke almost every vow he'd ever made.

One second, he heard footsteps, and the next, there she was. She came closer and her presence in the Force felt just like it had before, anger overlaying something else entirely, though that _something else_ was getting stronger. He could feel it as she stopped in front of him, in the rain, filling up his senses till there was nothing else at all. He could feel it as she pushed the nightdress from her shoulders and let it drop down to the ground. He could feel it as she went down on her knees, her skin shining wet in the moonlight. She sat back on her heels and he watched her, wide-eyed. She slipped her hands over her neck and her breasts and her sides and her thighs and then slowly dipped between them. When she gasped, he gasped. He felt his cock stiffen hard. 

He could feel what she felt there in the Force. He could feel her arousal, her frustration, her desire; he could feel the fact that she'd struggled with it, too, and not just him. He could feel her hands like they were on his skin and not hers. He could feel her desire as she looked at him, like a knot in his stomach, like a skipped beat of his heart. He watched her touch herself, watched her back arch, watched the rain on her skin. He could feel the chill but felt that it didn't bother her. He could feel it as she rocked her hips against her hand. It was in him, everything she did, overwhelming him entirely. He clamped one hand over his mouth. 

When she came, he came; he hadn't even touched himself at all. Then she put on her wet nightdress and she left him there alone. 

All that he could do was laugh out loud; it wasn't funny, except it really, really was.

\---

Every few months, he sends her flowers.

A visit doesn't always follow them, because that's just not always possible; Obi-Wan is a general now that they're fighting a war and Padmé is so often tied up with the senate that the same place at the same time is maybe one day in fifty, or even less. A private visit doesn't always follow, but sometimes, like tonight, he sends the flowers to coincide with a party they're both scheduled to attend. 

When he sees her across the room, it's like their last night on Naboo, the night of the senate confirmation. She was still in his head then from the night before, the look of her with her rain-damp hair and flushed skin. He was still half sure that she hated him, no matter what else she might have wanted. 

That night was entirely her night, and Obi-Wan was obliged to attend. That was the reason he was there on Naboo, after all - he could hardly beg off, not that that was conduct becoming a Jedi no matter what the circumstances. There she was at the banquet, at the head table with the queen and the other high officials, and afterwards, in the ballroom, she made polite political conversation while so many others danced while excellent musicians played. Obi-Wan observed as he made polite conversation of his own, half drunk on the smell of the flower he'd clipped from the garden and pinned to his lapel. It was a traditional Naboo style. She was wearing one just like it in her hair.

When they announced the last dance of the evening, he made his excuses and found himself walking straight across the room in one direct line that led to her. She watched him come to her; when he asked her to dance one heartbeat later, she was already saying yes. He left his cloak on a nearby chair, and they walked out onto the dancefloor, her hand resting against his.

"I didn't realise they taught Jedi to dance," she said, as he took her hand and led her. 

"They teach us diplomacy," he replied. "Diplomacy covers a number of skills." 

"Is that what this is?" she asked, brows raised. "Diplomacy?"

He considered that as they spun across the floor, in time, the senator and the Jedi Knight. 

"I don't know what this is," he said, as she squeezed at his waist, because he truly did not know. Now, he thinks what this is is he's in love with her, and he thinks she feels the same though they've never said the words out loud. 

That night, the party ended just like this one will; the guests trailed out in dribs and drabs as the hours passed. Tonight, the party is in her Coruscant apartments and he'll  
stay behind of leaving, some pretence of official business if anyone might think to ask, but _that_ night Obi-Wan excused himself and left the hall. He'd had his fill of politics and smiles and bows and intrigue. He went out to the garden. Not very long after, she followed.

That night, she didn't feel angry. As she walked across the garden in her beautiful long party dress, pulling the pins from her hair as she went, she didn't feel angry at all. He could feel that other thing, the thing that made his heart beat faster, that made his cheeks flush and heat sink straight into his cock. He could feel it as she came to him, rain in her hair and across her bare shoulders, the hem of her dress sweeping petals on the stone. She turned in front of him and swept her hair aside. He understood what he was meant to do. 

He stood. His hands were almost shaking as he unfastened the laces that tied the back of her dress and then she pulled the top away, rolled her shoulders, pushed the skirt down over her hips. She stepped out of the dress. She stepped out of her shoes and she turned to him, naked in the moonlight. 

He knew what he had to do next but he was too afraid to do it, so Padmé did it for him. She unclasped his belt and she set it aside, his lightsaber still clipped to it. She pushed his cloak from his shoulders. She unfastened his tunic. She eased off his boots. She undressed him, bit by bit, stripping him layer by layer till he was bare from head to toe and standing there with her on the wet flagstones, terrified of this thing that he was doing. He was terrified but he wanted it in spite of the life he led that he'd always wanted, too, that was just so incompatible with everything about this situation. He wanted _her_. In that moment, as she looked at him, as she put her hands on him, he knew that he could have her because she wanted him, too. 

He remembers kissing her. He remembers thinking maybe that was what might have happened that night in the bar if he hadn't put a halt to it, and he kissed her, his fingers in her long dark hair. He remembers how she kissed him back, as if it had been a very long time coming, as if there was nothing else she wanted more. But she wanted more and he could feel it in her, in the Force, in the air, as she stepped away to lean against the side of the stone arbour, her back pressed flat. She beckoned him close. He was already hard, and self-conscious but she bit her lip as she looked at him, as she reached out and put her hand on him. Her fingers were chilly and he shivered but that soon passed. Then, all there was was what she wanted from him. 

She pulled him close, one arm around his back and one in his rain-damp hair. She hitched up one thigh and he understood and he wanted that, too - he lifted her, with perhaps just a little help from in the Force, and she wrapped both her legs around his waist. He ran the head of his cock between her thighs. She took a hitching breath. He pushed inside. She gasped.

He remembers how it felt to have her, that night and every time that there's been after. He remembers how ashamed he felt as he moved in her but how very little he cared about that. He remembers the warmth of her, and her wet skin against his, and her hands and her breasts and her long neck that he kissed and he kissed and he kissed because it made her gasp again and again. He remembers the expression on her face as he looked at her, like she didn't know how this had happened any more than he did. They hadn't looked for it. Somehow it was just a thing that was. 

He could feel her trembling against him as he slipped one hand down between her thighs to rub against her. He could feel her muscles pulling tighter and her hands clawing at his back. He clenched his jaw and he moved in her, harder, faster, and she groaned and she bucked and she squeezed and she came. She held on tight as he moved, as he bit back a moan as he finished, shaking. He rested his head against her collarbone. She kissed his forehead. He leaned up to kiss her mouth, and then he set her down, her feet to the ground. 

He remembers how she took his hands and held him there for another long moment. He remembers how they shivered together and not just from the cold. He remembers the bright red blossom and the white-petaled flowers. He remembers how she looked at him. She's looking at him that way right now, across the room. 

In the morning, he escorted her to Coruscant. He honestly was not sure what might happen next, but it's been years and here they are; they both have duties now but sometimes, not quite idly, they make plans together for after the war. He doesn't know if he believes they'll live that long, but he believes she means them. He knows he does.

Every few months, whenever he can, Obi-Wan sends Padmé flowers. They're not her favourites, at least not officially - those are something simpler and much more common that she encourages everyone else to buy, because she likes the scent and they don't come with memories attached to them, not even good ones. 

The flowers he sends only grow on Naboo. They're pretty and white and they mean something, and tonight she's wearing one of them tucked into her hair. She smiles at him. He'll see her later.

One day, he hopes they'll go back to that garden and sit by the pond in the autumn rain. 

For now, the flowers will do.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from this quote: _The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence, but by oft falling._ (attributed to Lucretius)


End file.
